I have heard that new Britons find it difficult to identify with Britishness because it's not clearly defined.
I say they are not looking hard enough, you have to read a book or two!
The definition of Britishness is in our treasured fables and myths, our brilliant thoughts and deeds, for we, the Britons, have always been brilliant but 'far more better' I think than brilliance, one trait shines through above all else that we are.
In every last story, from ancient legend to cricket pitch, one principle for me is enshrined... Fair play.
That Britain is said to be both a nation of shopkeepers (freemen and free traders) and also run by committee (from parliament to local organisations) is evidence that all decisions are considered by a group of 'interested' parties.
You cannot be judged any better than by a group of your peers.
There is here a deeply ingrained sense of justice for the group which is weighted beautifully against the freedoms of the individual.
I could go on trying to explain but I think this is a more straightforward, if tiny, example of what it is to be a Briton...

We are Merlin, Boudicca, King Arthur.
We are Alfred, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe.
We are the kings of middle fingering Babylon.
We are William Wallace, Rob Roy and King Henery VIII.
We are Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare and Cromwell.
We are Rourke's Drift, The Wooden Horse and the Great escape.
We are R.J. Mitchell and Douglas Bader.
We are Emmeline Pankhurst and Diana Princess of Wales.
We are Dorris Lessing, Quentin Crisp, Queen Victoria and Dr Who.
We are the bane of fascism.
We are Steven Hawking and David Beckham.
We are George and the Dragon
We are Faraday, Babbage and Turing.
We are the industrial revolution and Celtic knot work.
We are the battle of Britain and the spirit of the Blitz.
We are Agincourt, Waterloo and Trafalgar.
We are Blackbeard, Morgan, Bartholomew Roberts and the East India Trading Company.
We are free.
We are Tea
We are 'V'
We are Tim Berners-Lee.
We invented almost every ball game you ever heard of.
We back the underdog.
We want the little guy to not be oppressed by the big guy.
We want the play to be fair.
We are implacable and indomitable and no matter what anyone says "Britannia does rule the waves".~ Granddad
We are Churchill and Darwin and Blake.
We are Orwell and Austin and HG Wells.
We are Douglas Adams and Mary Shelley.
We are him off the telly.
We are Brunel, Issigonis and Monty Python
We are Tolkien and Dickens and Roald Dahl
We are Doyle, Carroll and Agatha Christie
We are Viagra, The Jet engine and Radar
We are Newton, Crick and Bertrand Russell
We are Alexander and Ian Fleming (no relation!)
We are cockney rhyming slang and the voice of the valleys.
We are Twiggies, Beatles and Stones.
We, Tim, are also Rock!
We are the isles of never say die with a passion for peace.
It's why we are happy to queue.
It's why we are Great Britain.
It's taken centuries to make it.
It's why you want to come here.
PLEASE DON'T FUCK IT ALL UP WITH YOUR OLD COUNTRY'S BAGGAGE.

We, the Britons, are the reason you want to live here. We don't care what colour or class or sex you are.
But why must you drag your old customs and religions to a land where evolved so gracefully this clarity of purpose, this high mantra we call fair play?

This is lifted straight from the petition site. I have nothing to add...

"One of the luxuries of the internet is that it's a forum of expression. And in this forum, anyone should be able to contribute to a discussion and speak their mind.

But Karim Amer, a young blogger from Egypt, was sentenced to four years in prison for this very act.

Amer was charged with publishing material critical of Islam and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarek and imprisoned, despite the fact that he acted within his universal right to peaceful freedom of expression. Amer claims that while imprisoned, he has been beaten at least twice under the supervision of a prison officer.

All people should have the freedom to peacefully express their opinions. Tell the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek to free this prisoner of conscience and accept all people's right to the freedom of expression."

Well, what do you know, science shows that the very religious are no more than the very anxious...

Religious extremism driven by anxiety, says research
A series of studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who were asked whether they would die for their faith or support their country going to war in its defence were more likely to say yes when they were in anxiety-provoking situations...

...Earlier research by the same team found that strong religious beliefs are associated with low activity in the part of the brain that controls anxiety, the anterior cingulate cortex.
Prof McGregor says: "Taken together, the results of this research program suggest that bold but vulnerable people gravitate to idealistic and religious extremes for relief from anxiety."

Makes you wonder if psychologists armed with Diazepam, Prozac or ready made spliffs should be stationed at the doors of religious institutions, churches, mosques and synagogues etc.
Either way, the research adds a little gravitas to my Religion - Refuge of the Weak and Powerless? speculation, eh?

This is one of the Too Many Questions

PEACE
Crispy

Please leave a comment - Anything will do
The best communications are often,THREE WORDS OR LESS
OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!

It is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts, and from being indoctrinated into any religion before they are of the age to make such decisions. When installed properly, GodBlock will test each page that your child visits before it is loaded, looking for passages from holy texts, names of religious figures, and other signs of religious propaganda. If none are found, then your child is allowed to browse freely.

1. "Who will decide what is good and what is bad"(1min 47 secs) HE GETS A ROUND OF APPLAUSE! Can the audience not see that the subtext of this seemingly simple answer is... "The Old men who are my bosses have already decided what is good and bad for you. If we let everybody just choose the best bits of religions, we lose control of you."

The answer should be, of course, individuals can decide, peacefully, for themselves.

Dictatorship from the Dark Ages is not required.

2. "I challenge any human being to point out a single principle of Islam which is against humanity as a whole"(3mins 50secs) ANOTHER ROUND OF APPLAUSE! The indoctrination of audience is astonishing and frightening. Their reaction shows that they are all totally convinced that nobody would ever be able to meet his challenge! So, I suspect they, at least, are going to be a bit shocked and cross but hey you only live once so, I'll take that challenge doc. If you've not read them yet Dr Zakir Naik, please see...

3. His reasons for why men should have more than 1 wife (this is a precis of his words because he goes on a bit.)"using logic there are more women in the world than men."(4 mins 50 secs) his reasons are to support the Qur'an's Ham-fisted solution to any problem that there may be between man and female population 'men are allowed more than 1 wife'
At no point does he wander into the territory of exploring a better solution! The only alternative he offers is "single women must become public property" He goes on to spout "in Islam when you have a second wife you have to give equal rights, she has honour, she has respect." (7 mins 30 secs) The obvious inference here, that a woman cannot be honoured or respected unless she is the property of a man, is a disgracefully misogynistic and archaic statement of the foulest order. Public property! Obviously women should not have to be owned by a man in order to live within society. Society should support women who wish to live alone to do so.

A human, is its own property!

And the words 'have to' (meaning 'must') suggests that without Islam a man is incapable of honouring / respecting a second wife!

There global population consists of 3,442,850,573 men and a remarkably similar 3,386,509,865 women (Stats from Geohive.com)

3,442,850,573 / 3,386,509,865 = 1.017 Men for each Woman

That sounds to me distinctly like Women should have the option of more than 1 husband!

Dr Zakir Naik's words seem to me to be twisty and dishonourable. Is Dr Zakir Naik mistaken or deliberately deceptive?
Even if his life depended on it, would you trust him to tell, or even recognise the truth?

For point 4 I'm going to switch to a different emission of crud from this twister of truth. You don't have to watch the whole clip because about 7 of the 9 minutes length can be summed up in "blah, blah, blah", "that's condescending", "that's misleading".

(I've included another clip by subach at the end of this post that deals with the numerous twists of truth in the speech.)

As an aside, before I get into my final point, at 6 minutes and 30 seconds, Dr Zakir Naik recites of a list of chapters and verses. The audience give him a rousing round of applause but their adulation is more about how accomplished a parrot he is. This kind of display of recitation was the stuff of children's performances in Victorian parlour games.
I find it worrying that the audience considers his ability to relay his brain-washing worthy of applause! I can only assume that, in Islam, being an automaton is praised higher than original thinking!

4. My main focus for this point is the first 1 minute and 45 seconds were he sets up the premise and last 30 seconds or so wear he makes his 'point'.
Dr Zakir Naik repeatedly asks the following question as bullet points throughout this speech...

"How could he (Muhammad) have known that 1400 years ago?"

I am sure the doc is aware that this question is entirely different from proving a god exists but the posing of the question encourages the audience to mentally conclude "god did it"

Dr Zakir Naik primes the audience, controls their thought direction, and then suggests that the only answer an atheist could provide is 'the creator' which gives a false positive to support the 'keep them believing' agenda of his example.
In fact, the only answer an atheist could reasonably give to the question...

"How could he have known that 1400 years ago?"
is

"I don't know and, on current evidence, it appears neither does anybody else."

Whilst wild assumptions must be made to conclude any other answer, I suggest that given the fact that the most impressive libraries of antiquity were destroyed before the Qur'an was written, it's more likely that the information for which Muhammad claimed divine origin actually originated in one of the destroyed repositories.

Anyway, that's your lot, I think after some dissection that the UK government got it right. On initial impressions Dr Zakir Naik looks like a kindly, simple, even buffoon-like chap but this man is no idiot. He is clever and dangerous and manipulates an audience with consummate kills of a state of the art charlatan psychic.

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